This invention relates to a process of a chemical and physical treatment of a mycelium which is in a natural or dry condition or has been treated by crushing, and to a process of treating solutions of heavy metals thereby. The mycelium may belong to different kinds of microorganisms, particularly of fibrous fungi capable of retention of metals such as uranium, lead, radium and others from their solutions. The retention mechanism may be for instance based on sorption.
It has already been proposed to apply the mycelium of some kind of lower fungi, advantageously of waste mycelium in the fermenting and pharmaceutical industry for removal of uranium, of elements of the uranium-radium type, of lead and other metals. This material has a good capacity and selectivity but has a drawback in having a low mechanical rigidity; this causes difficulties in the retention or sorption process by means of a column or by other modifications of dynamic sorption in industrial operation. This holds true for both for filtered native mycelium and for dried mycelium.